Melissa Cooper is a real estate developer, investor, and entrepreneur based in Boston and California.

J. Melissa Cooper is an Internet Entrepreneur and Real Estate Developer. She has started and monetized five companies, including a staffing firm at age 23, and a career services firm at the intersection of executive search and technology, which grew to 500 employees with wholesale customers such as Monster.com and Indeed.com.

She successfully navigated her first exit in 2014 to TopResume.com & Talent, Inc.

Shortly after, she authored a book Freelance Nation on her experience in the developing ‘gig economy’ and has since then been a full time real estate developer. She now owns and operates Phoenix Development, a real estate development firm focused on 10-50 unit condominium buildings in the Boston and San Francisco Bay areas.

Melissa has been an angel investor in several start-up companies and is still an active owner in her original biotech search firms, HirePerfect and Back Bay Search in the Boston-Cambridge biotech sphere.

Aside from private sector business, Melissa has founded and established an official NPO with 501(c) status, and has completed several initiatives throughout the last 18 years, many in developing areas of Asia.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA and a Master of Science from New York University in New York, NY.